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Next.js is infuriating

blog.meca.sh

521–530 of 602 posts

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#521
post #80

A lot of companies have Nextjs as a requirement, you can see it in the job posts. It's almost like React = Nextjs, where they don't even mention React. There are developers out there who are highly invested in Vercel's business. Ultimately, the dev teams are responsible for making these decisions. I've encountered issues based on Nextjs in a few projects where the best approach was to eliminate it. The outcome was ni…

I talked to a computer science student who told me that React is old, no one is using that anymore. He said now NextJS is the thing to use. No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that NextJS is a framework that uses React, he would not listen or understand. Scary times ahead.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#522
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich Harris answered this question on Reddit a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/sveltejs/comments/19ac6lp/concern_a... Seems Svelte is still mostly managed as an independent open source project.

Given that Svelte's marketing and docs now treat Svelte itself as a minor implementation detail of SvelteKit, this doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

That seems to be a strongly held position of Rich himself. He really really wants people to default to ssr with hydration, which they can only deliver with Sveltekit. The new direction they have with a new simpler rpc-like way of loading data that replaces the existing load functions, does seem like they are working in the direction of making Sveltekit simpler to work with. They don't seem like they are trending in a direction of deeper integration with one hosting vendor. Also they've always had one single abstraction for integrating with hosting options, which gives all hosting options a level playing field.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#523

I was about to start a new project with Next.js... is anyone willing to give me some advice? I'm about to start building an e-commerce site (30-50k poster print designs, i.e. no inventory), and was leaning towards a Django backend (because I know it) and... some sort of SSR frontend. I'm not really a frontend guy, but taking this as an opportunity to learn it. This article obviously does not inspire confidence in me…

You should definitely run through the Rails tutorial at least. I rediscovered Rails this last year (and checked out Django/Laravel) and it's really awesome these days.

So many things built in ready to go.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#524
I’ve never used Next.js. To be honest, Express has always gotten the job done without too much hassle. In theory, what are the benefits of using Next.js over Express?

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic react experience presumably. As a first approximation, it seems like every possible interview sounds like a bad interview to someone. What has worked well for you?

Seems more like a test on random React minutiae. Like, let's take some framework, take away some random piece. How well do you know the area around that random piece we just removed? Frameworks are large and gnarly (or there isn't enough to them). Expecting a candidate to be lucky and know random implementation details in the area that happened to be picked doesn't seem like you'd select for anything other than luck.…

The most basic React functionality isn't "React minutiae".

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#527
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was interesting handling frontend interviews recently. We do a 30-min tops exercise where you create a React project to show how to use useState and useEffect, etc. I help with whatever command they want to use and allow Google/ChatGPT. More than half of the candidates had no idea how to use React without Next.js, and some argued it was impossible, even after I told them the opposite.

This surprises me a lot. I spin up new react apps with vite often to replicate issues with 3rd party libs we use. Like how do they not know you can just spin something up over on CodePen or CodeSandbox and there's not a hint of a server side paradigm required? (sure, vite has a little server but you don't really need to know anything about it)

Some devs have worked exclusively in feature mills where expectations are rock bottom and some senior setups the project for them. When recruiters don't filter them, a basic React test has to.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#528

I 100% agree. I've ran into the same issues, and I would never use Next.js for anything, and I will encourage every team at work to use something else. In general Next.js has so many layers of abstraction that 99.9999% of projects don't need. And the ones that do are probably better off building a bespoke solution from lower level parts. Next.js is easily the worst technology I've ever used.

What did you use instead?

I've really been loving Astro lately, it's simple enough that it stays out of your way and you can host it yourself easily. Gives you nice backend + frontend with the option to drop in React, Vue, Angular, etc if you need them.

react-router if you just want a simple React frontend, write your backend in something else.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#529
It rocks how Vercel has spent so much time and money on marketing Next.js that my product manager tried to tell me last year that I had to use it. In his mind we wouldn't be able to build our app correctly (an SPA that barely a couple hundred people use) or find developers since everyone uses and knows Next.js.

truly hate how hard these guys have made my job by making react popular.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#530
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vercel won the techfluencer space like none other. They get a bad rep largely due to the influencer crowd adjacent to them. Influencers are cancer but an almost necessary one like marketing. Annoying, obnoxious, and always trying to get your email but god damn do they get your attention.

No. It’s not the influencers, they are just an irrelevant nuisance. It’s the business plan of Vercel, the venture-Capital backed company. They hire the core contributors of all major web frameworks to continue development under their roof. Suddenly, ongoing improvement of the web platform is largely dependent on the whims of Vercel investors. They pretend to cater to all hosting providers equally, but just look at Ne…

If you know much about oss devs, then you know they make little money for buckets of work. Vercel is a path where they can make good money and still do some amount of oss work. I dont agree with the argument that vercel=bad because they hire people.

The fact you use the term ssr market is a key point to how effective vercel’s marketing has been via techfluencers. There isnt a market for ssr in the way you use it, only web hosting.

There is a world of engineering outside js framework relevancy wars. It isnt only vercel pushing the framing btw. Other players are trying to replicate the vercel marketing playbook. Use/hire techfluencers/oss devs to push frameworks/stacks on devs who then push it up the company stack.

Usually it doesnt work for a startup but vercel proved it can.

Enter a million lite framework wrappers around well known tech, like supabase and postgres, upstash and redis, vercel and aws.

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